Lack Of Funds Can Also Start From Scratch.

It is indeed feasible for many things to start from scratch. We can cite many examples of existing large companies. The following is not the art of bragging, but the art of starting from scratch.

1. focus on cash flow rather than profitability (Focusoncashflow, notprofitability).

Theoretically speaking, profit is the key to survival.

The problem is that theory can not be used to pay bills.

In reality, you pay in cash, so please focus on cash flow.

If you will start from scratch, your business should have these characteristics: less capital required, shorter sales cycle, shorter payment period, and recurringrevenue.

This means that you have to give up the list of 12 months to complete orders, deliveries and receivables.

Cash is everything to a self-made person.

2. bottom-up prediction (Forecastfromthebottomup).

Many entrepreneurs make a top-down prediction: "there are 150 million cars in the United States.

Even in the first year, only 1% of the cars installed our satellite radio system, that is the 1 million 500 thousand system.

The bottom up prediction is this: "in the first year, we could create 10 installation points.

Every installation point installs 10 systems per day on average. The sales volume in the first year will be 10 installation points, 10 sets / days / installation points and 240 days =24000 sets.

24000 is still far from the conservative estimate of top 1 million 500 thousand.

Which one do you think is more likely to be realized?

3. first shipment, then test (Ship, thentest).

I have heard the critique: "how can you recommend sending goods that are not perfect?" and so on.

Perfect is the enemy of "goodenough".

When your product or service is good enough, submit them to customers as soon as possible so as to get cash inflow.

Moreover, spending more time does not guarantee perfection. It only produces more unnecessary functions.

After shipment, you can also see what problems the customer really needs to solve.

Of course, this requires a compromise between your reputation and cash flow: you certainly can't send a bunch of rubbish to your customers, but you can't wait for your product to be perfect.

Note: those companies related to life sciences should ignore this proposal.

4. forget the so-called "convincing" team (Forgetthe "proven" team).

The convincing team demands are too high, especially for most people to define it as a group of people who work for super big companies in the past ten years.

These people are accustomed to a certain way of life, but they are by no means a self-made way of life.

Those who are young, cheap and eager to work are those who are quick but not necessarily full of experience (peoplewithfastchips, butnotnecessarilyafullyfunctionalinstructionset).

When you achieve a substantial cash flow, hire those senior managers.

Before that, please use those people you can afford and develop them into excellent employees.

5. start with service (Startasaservicebusiness).

If your idea is to eventually set up a software company, let people spend money on your software.

This is a very clear business and has a perfect business model.

However, before completing your software, you can also provide consulting services based on your mid term products.

There are two advantages to doing this: immediate income and real customer testing.

Once your software has withstood all kinds of tests and tests, you can turn the company into a product type.

6. focus on function rather than form (Focusonfunction, notform).

I like good form.

MacBooks; Audis; Grafskates; Bauersticks; Breitlingwatches.

You can also quote a lot.

But the self-made person pays attention to function rather than form when shopping.

The corresponding functions above are: computing; moving from point A to point B; skating; skiing; and understanding time.

These functions do not require expensive forms that I like.

A chair is used to seat your ass on it; it does not need a museum that looks modern.

You have to design noble things, but you need to buy cheap things.

7. fight selectively (Pickyourbattles).

The self-made people fight selectively.

They will not fight on all fronts, because they can not afford it.

If you want to open a new church, do you really need a $100 thousand multimedia audio-visual system or a gospel from a podium? If you want to build an advertising revenue website (acontentwetsitebasedontheadvertisingmodel), do you need to write your own customerad-servingsoftware? I don't think so.

8. employ as few employees as possible (Understaff).

Many entrepreneurs reserve employees for the best possible situation.

Conservative estimate (top down), the first year of satellite radio system sales will be 1 million 500 thousand sets.

We'd better set up a 24 hour customer support center. "

What's the result? You can't sell 1 million 500 thousand systems at all, but you did hire 200 employees, train them, and place them in a 50 thousand square foot electronic market center.

The self-made people employ as few employees as they know that any bad situation can happen.

Understaffed, according to the Silicon Valley, belongs to a "benign problem" (ahighqualityproblem).

Believe me, when an entrepreneur starts calling for more money because of surging sales, any venture capitalist will be in a state of joy.

Surprises are called surprises because they seldom happen.

9., adopt direct selling mode (Godirect).

There should be no third party between the self-made person and his client.

Indeed, stores provide access to consumers, and wholesalers offer ways to distribute goods.

But God invented electronic commerce (eCommerce), so that you can direct your products and achieve higher marginal profits.

God's intelligence lies in that you can understand more customer needs through direct selling.

Stores and wholesalers are used to meet demand, and they do not create demand.

If you can create enough demand, you will always find other organizations to meet it. If you can not create enough demand, then the so-called worldwide distribution channels will be meaningless to you.

10. use the industry leader to make a comparison (Positionagainsttheleader).

Do you have no money to tell your story from scratch?

It's better to use the leader of the industry.

Toyota sells Lexus this way: it costs half the price to buy the quality of Mercedes.

Toyota does not need to explain what is the quality of Mercedes.

Think about how much money they can save for advertising! Other things like "cheap iPod" and "Bose noise free headphones belonging to the public" have the same effect.

Choose the "red pill" (Takethe "redpill").

Just as Neo decided in TheMatrix.

The red pill will let you know the whole truth, while the blue pill will make you feel like a nightmare when you wake up.

The self-made people do not have the luxury to choose the blue pill.

They are busy knowing the truth every day - how deep the rabbit hole is.

Saving your expenses as much as possible is a truth. It is important to reduce the speed of your spending, because if you spend your money, it means your company is dead.

So the total amount of cash divided by the speed of burning will tell you the time to live, and do not want to be kicked out, so try to survive.